Individuals involved in purchasing, outsourcing, and other business-to-business interactions must generally understand and select products and services for their organizations from a variety of competing entities. These individuals currently base their decision making on information obtained from a wide variety of sources, including face-to-face meetings, paper publications and telephone conversations. They can also consult information that is available electronically, such as databases, provider web sites, and so-called portals. For example, inferior partners may be selected for business relationships to avoid the high costs of searching out better partners.
Once businesses have contracted for a transaction or relationship, typically information must be exchanged many times between individuals, between software systems, and between individuals and software systems. These information exchanges may also occur through a wide variety of mechanisms, including face-to-face meetings, paper publications, and telephone conversations. Again, collecting, managing, and making sense of this abundance of assorted information can be costly and time-consuming. And the quality of the business relationship often suffers because of these high costs.